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Monthly Archives: July 2012

Last night I walked out of a local GameStop with a copy of The Bouncer, Squaresoft’s overhyped 2001 beat ’em up for the PlayStation 2 — released only a handful of months after the console came out in the U.S.

For less than $3, I ended up with a paper sleeve containing a scratched-up copy of this game I’d never really played before — one caught in my memories, all the same, of that console’s early days. About two hours after I slotted it into the drive of my PlayStation 3, I was done with it.

I don’t regret my investment.

One of the weird things about The Bouncer — besides everything about it, including its massive hype — is how it sort of feels like a contemporary game. At the time, the game’s cutscene/fighting/cutscene/fighting pacing seemed really strange. Some of the fighting sequences in the game last less than a minute. But you implemented a modern checkpoint system and streaming instead of clunky manual game saves and constant loading screens, it’d feel oddly contemporary, I think.

Hey. Hey, guys. Sorry we’re a little late. We wanted to make sure and take the time to get this episode soooo right. I think you’ll find it was worth the wait. Draw yourself a warm bubble bath, pour a vintage sherry, listen to some Chopin, and then turn off the Chopin and pop on Episode 4 of the Insert Credit Podcast. This week thosethreeguys are back to discuss:

Thanks again to our man Andrew Toups for concentrating our combined raw genius into sweet love for your ear canals. And remember if you want in on the fun, it’s as easy as dropping a question to podcast@insertcredit.com.

And hey, here’s an idea: why not record yourself answering any of our questions and send it on over? Just keep it between thirty seconds and one minute, and we might just play it on the show. Looking forward to hearing from you cats and kittens.

In Talmudic Judaism, there is a principle known as “Chazakah”. This principle dictates that if something occurs three times, it is safe to assume that this occurrence has been established as the status quo. By this token, the Insert Credit podcast is now an irrefutable facet of our reality! This week, Frank “C-Note” Cifaldi, Tim “T-Bone” Rogers, and “Reckless Abrandon” Sheffield (all pictured above) join me once more to discuss the following topics:

1) How many vowels there are in “Ouya”
2) Brandon’s Groundhog Day dream
3) Batman vs. Batman
4) Molyneux’s Box
5) The Seinfeld of Video Games
6) Storyboarding the next DOAX
7) Aron Boag and the Value of the Vita
8) shagagamer.com
9) Insert Credit: The Webcomic
10) “It’s Hyperdimension Neptunia, Mom!”

You may notice that our podcast no longer instills the innate longing to jab toothpicks into your eardrums until the very concept of sound is a distant memory. This is entirely owed to our new sound editor, the grammy-nominated Andrew Toups. You may know him as the guy who composed the undeniably radical soundtrack of ZiGGURAT. Well here’s a fun fact: he is also the progenitor of every original song you hear on this podcast! We hope you grow to love him as much as I do.

Hey, Jerks: Do you want to hear your dumb question on a future episode of the Insert Credit Podcast? You too can experience the sublime apotheosis of Aron Boag by sending an e-mail to podcast@insertcredit.com! Our operators are standing by (I am our operators).

BONUS UPDATE: Did you remember listening to this podcast and being overwhelmed with the desire to puncture your eardrums with toothpicks until the very concept of sound was a distant memory? Well now you don’t have to — our brand new sound editor Andrew Toups has graciously remastered this episode for your listening pleasure! Thanks Toupsie!

Hi guys! It’s’a me, tim rogers. Brandon, Frank, and I have been talking — for about two years — about starting a podcast. So after the seven-thousandth joke re: us getting that podcast going someday transpired, fell smack on the floor, and made us feel real sad, I knew just what to do: call up this hotshot kid I know who has a really quick brain for thinking about them dumb videogames: Alex Jaffe. He’d previously helped me have more fun writing a Kotaku article than I’d ever had, so I thought he’d be perfect for helping us craft the perfect podcast. So, just the other day, when the sadness re: not having a podcast of my own was really getting to me, I decided to ask him to help us finally make it happen. So here it is. I’m going to let Alex Jaffe introduce the show, and hopefully this won’t be the last time — or even a significant fraction of the times — he introduces us:

Nearly a decade ago, insert credit dot com was established as the premier location for jerks to write about video games. Then, in February of 2009, the site went dark.

Two years later we returned, but let’s face it: the insert credit of today is not the one you remember. So let’s make things personal again. Every week, yours truly — Alex Jaffe — will host Brandon Sheffield, tim rogers, and Frank Cifaldi in an hour of relentlessly on-topic video game discussion addressing all the hard-hitting issues of the day, all while making a bunch of dumb jokes.

The premise is simple: instead of rambling tangentially on a single topic for ninety minutes or two hours (or three hours), we bring you ten talking points relegated to no more than six minutes each, making for sixty minutes of lucid, juicy content. Any time left over at the end will be designated for a rapid fire lightning round, as our panel attempts to quickly address as many quick questions as possible before the final buzzer. We’re pretty proud of how it’s been turning out so far!

But as hot as we are, we will only be getting hotter. As the insert credit dot com podcast develops, you can expect elaborate themes and imaginative challenges for our panel, myriads of guest panelists from the worlds of game journalism and development, and an emerging gameshow style format which will pioneer podcasting as a competitive sport reaching its glorious head as an olympic event in the year 2148 by declaring the most insightful and hilarious contributor, as measured against a predefined rubric, the winner of the interview.

We hope that you’ll give us a listen, subscribe on iTunes, and if you like it, leave a review. If you have any questions you’d like to ask our illustrious panel, send them to gorblax (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject line “Insert Credit Podcast”. You may just hear them on the show!